Print Preview defeaulting to slide number 1

[Hari Prasadh]

Hi,

If am on slide number 64 (ordinal position) and if I go for print preview
then I end up looking at slide number 1.

Is there any way one can tweak ppt to make it display the active slide in
print preview rather than showing the first slide ?

(Winword would let one see the print preview from the active page so why
cant ppt?)

Thanks a lot,
Hari
India

 

[Sonia]

Have you tried using the scroll bar on the right side and scrolling down in the
Print Preview window? All slides are there and you can see them one by one, or
jump around. In the upper left corner there are "Previous" and "Next" buttons
also.
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials
http://www.soniacoleman.com

 

[Hari Prasadh]

Hi Sonia,

Im sorry for not being clear enough in my original post.

I can use scroll bar/previous/next button etc in PPT but I am not sure why I
should resort to them.

The point is that in word if am on page number 64 and go to print preview
then word will display the page 64 in print preview directly. Word would not
display the page 1 ( if a on page 64 before pressing print preview) and
hence one doesnt have to waste time/energy in scrolling to page 64.

OTOH in PPT am saddled with print preview of slide 1 even though I want to
preview slide 64. (Before pressing print preview Iam on slide 64 but still I
have to start from slide 1 in print preview).

Please guide me.

Thanks a lot,
Hari
India

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Hi,

If am on slide number 64 (ordinal position) and if I go for print preview
then I end up looking at slide number 1.

Is there any way one can tweak ppt to make it display the active slide in
print preview rather than showing the first slide ?

In addition to Sonia's suggestions, you can always choose Print, then choose
Current Slide or a range of slides, and then click Print Preview in the lower
left corner of the print dialog box.

 

[Hari Prasadh]

H Steve,

you can always choose Print, then choose
Current Slide or a range of slides, and then click Print Preview in the
lower

The above method is better than searching for the slide. But I still dont
understand as to why MS has not built in a straight forward method for
looking up slides in preview.
Also, in the proposed method I see that if I choose current slide then it
offers print preview of only that page. Range of slides is again a little
cumbersome as I would have to specifically type in those slides.

And yes there is also the danger of inadvertently pressing on Ok (and
printing stuff prematurely) while using this method.

Let me explain my requirement. Many times folks design slides wherein it
looks good for a presentation but when taking printout I see a black hole
(like a slide has some text box with text in particular font and background
fill color and while printing textbox comes out as fully black - For ex.
http://support.sas.com/rnd/app/papers/statversion8.zip the slides based on
equation editor has some horrendous fill colors as far as printing is
concerned.)

Now, I would like to quickly identify whichever slides exhibit this problem
and then change the pattern, then switch over to print preview quickly and
see whether the problem has been solved after tweaking with new fill color
and repeat this for all the problem slides. As you can see, this itself is a
wearing down process.

Hence I was alluding to the print preview feature in word in which one
doesnt have to scroll up and down.

(Thanx for -- and then click Print Preview in the lower left corner of the
print dialog box -- I had not noticed this button before).

Thanks a lot,
Hari
India

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

H Steve,


The above method is better than searching for the slide. But I still dont
understand as to why MS has not built in a straight forward method for
looking up slides in preview.

Nor do I. Your idea is a perfectly reasonable one. You might want to submit
it as a suggestion to MS.

I can see why my suggestion isn't perfect but it's the best I know of at the
moment.

It looks as though this might work nicely if you're accustomed to using macros:

Sub JustThisPage()
ActiveWindow.ViewType = ppViewPrintPreview
End Sub

Add that to your presentation (or another one that you have open at the same
time), customize it onto a convenient toolbar and you have one-click access to
a preview of the current slide.

Neat. Thanks for bringing this up ... another handy bit of knowledge for the
file.

 

[Hari Prasadh]

Hi Steve,

Thnx for that macro.

It looks as though this might work nicely if you're accustomed to using
macros:

Iam quite comfortable in using the same as I keep pinching macros from net.
Thnx for the suggestion to tie it up to a toolbar. Rather I though I would
go for a key-board shortcut button but in macro option I didnt find the same
(doesnt ppt have this feature as this exists in Word and excel ?). Moreover
I thought that I would rather save this macro in a global ppt (similar to
Personal workbook in excel and Normal.dot in Word) but didnt find a similar
option in ppt. Why? In excel there is a Start folder specific to excel which
opens up all excel files in that folder (Personal.xls is there), do we have
a similar option in PPT in order to create a workaround for the absence of a
global macro ppt file?

Finally I pasted ur code in anew module and went back to my presentation and
made active slide number 64 and then resized both the presentation and Vb
editor and then pressed F5 in VB, but ppt is again defaulting to slide
number 1 only. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks a lot,
Hari
India

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Iam quite comfortable in using the same as I keep pinching macros from net.
Thnx for the suggestion to tie it up to a toolbar. Rather I though I would
go for a key-board shortcut button but in macro option I didnt find the same
(doesnt ppt have this feature as this exists in Word and excel ?).

No, unfortunately not.

I thought that I would rather save this macro in a global ppt (similar to
Personal workbook in excel and Normal.dot in Word) but didnt find a similar
option in ppt. Why?

I don't know. It does seem odd that PPT has never gotten this ability, but it
doesn't have anything similar. However, you may find that as long as PPT can
locate the PPT file the macro's stored in, it'll open it as needed when you
click the button that calls the macro. As far as I know, this isn't
documented, and there's no guarantee that it'll work. Better bet is to save
your global macros in a single file and open that when you start working in
PPT.

In excel there is a Start folder specific to excel which

opens up all excel files in that folder (Personal.xls is there), do we have
a similar option in PPT in order to create a workaround for the absence of a
global macro ppt file?

No luck there either.

Finally I pasted ur code in anew module and went back to my presentation and
made active slide number 64 and then resized both the presentation and Vb
editor and then pressed F5 in VB, but ppt is again defaulting to slide
number 1 only. What am I doing wrong?

I see the problem ... try modifying the macro like so:

Sub JustThisPage()
With ActivePresentation.PrintOptions
.RangeType = ppPrintCurrent
.OutputType = ppPrintOutputSlides
End With
ActiveWindow.ViewType = ppViewPrintPreview
End Sub

You might want to change other PrintOptions parameters ... record a macro as
you make a single actual page of printout to your chosen printer, then use the
appropriate options from the recorded macro.

 

[Hari Prasadh]

Hi Steve,

Thnx a ton for your thoughtful answers. I liked every one of them.

If MS can work towards common xml format for ppt, excel and word then it
should also work towards developing common (consistent) features in their
office products. That way beginners like me wont have to invest (or tear
their hair) in searching for a feature which doesnt exist in one of the
office products.

I have wondered as to whether there is any use of forwarding suggestions to
MS. Once read through (may be a year back) their "terms and conditions" and
they were asking about giving details on cost-benefit analysis ( and number
of employees/people benefiting etc) on including the proposed suggestions.
They want us to their the Market research for them. Phew!

Thnx a ton for the macro as well. It works nicely.

Thanks a lot,
Hari
India

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Hi Steve,

Thnx a ton for your thoughtful answers. I liked every one of them.

If MS can work towards common xml format for ppt, excel and word then it
should also work towards developing common (consistent) features in their
office products. That way beginners like me wont have to invest (or tear
their hair) in searching for a feature which doesnt exist in one of the
office products.

It's a worthy goal. PowerPoint seems to be Office's tail; Word and Excel are
the dogs. Um. I don't like where this is going. Reboot the paragraph.

People seem to buy Office to get Word and Excel ... PowerPoint's just a nice
bonus for most of them, so PPT seems to be last in line when development
resources are handed out. Stuff trickes down eventually ...

I have wondered as to whether there is any use of forwarding suggestions to
MS. Once read through (may be a year back) their "terms and conditions" and
they were asking about giving details on cost-benefit analysis ( and number
of employees/people benefiting etc) on including the proposed suggestions.
They want us to their the Market research for them. Phew!

<g> Well, at the very least they want to understand why a particular problem
or the lack of a feature causes you pain, and dollars are one way to measure
the hurt. In the aggregate, info like this is probably fairly useful in
deciding where those scarce development resources go. Cure the most pain with
the fewest dev dollars.